Herbie's Fish and Yakari hotpot in his own words.

See a yakari (a humped rodent up to a metre long with teeth like a rat) by a river and wait until he catches a fish. Sometimes he takes hours but I have time.

Kill him with an arrow as he drags the fish up the bank and run to stop the fish escaping into the river.

Clean the guts out but keep the good bits and chop up the yakari and the fish

Boil water with garlic, onion, cinnamon, cloves, chilli, salt and cassareep and other herbs from the jungle. Put in the bits and cook slowly until tender and tasty

In the words of Anthony Collins from the Macareo River Venezuela:

'Cut down a big old moriche palm and dig into the bottom to get the fattest white grubs. Pull on the black bit at one end and the guts come out. Do not swallow any now; they are so good you will not be able to stop eating them. Chop up some of the tender inside cabbage leaves (heart of palm) from the top of the tree and boil them in their own juice. As soon as it is boiling hard, take off the fire, add chopped fresh grubs and stir. The hot cabbage cooks the grubs and it all tastes good.'

From the words of Daion a 16 year old Venezuelan

Callaloo soup

(Callaloo is a wild-grown or cultivated spinach-like leaf often having formic acid in its leaves, that scratch the throat)

'Get a big bunch of not scratchy callaloo, a big onion, some eschalot, celery, pepper and salt, lots of sweet chillies and lots of garlic, some okra. Herbs use thyme, basil, and one small scotch bonnet pepper. Half pint of coconut milk. Fat for frying.

Method: Fry chopped onion and garlic in fat

Add 2 pints water and everything else (except coconut and callaloo) and bring to the boil. Add lots of chilli to make it hot to taste. Simmer for a half an hour

Add finely chopped callaloo and coconut milk and simmer three minutes then mash it all.

Helena from the Pomeroon River Guyana cooked Mettegee, a wonderful solid soup, for us

6 oz salt meat and 12 oz salt fish, two pints of coconut milk, 3 pounds of mixed provisions (root vegetables), four green bananas, 4 oz pumpkin, a big onion, 3 sprigs of fine leaf thyme, 4 seasoning peppers, 1 hot pepper, bunch of chives, teaspoon of pepper

Fry garlic chives onion chopped, seasoning peppers and salt meat. Add coconut milk and provisions green bananas, cook until almost tender then add green veg. Add salt fish and salt meat after it is soaked in water to lose salt. Simmer until tender

We so enjoyed the meals the Indians made for us every Chapter is preceded by one of their recipes......here are some samples